


The Dangers of Childhood Hunger

by Cain124



Series: Second Hand Tarot [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 15:05:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 11,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14167524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cain124/pseuds/Cain124
Summary: Inter connected drabbles of Dean's life if the secret he had been keeping wasn't just about the family business. Dean Winchester has the spark of hunger in his belly that has haunted him since the first time he picked up a Tarot Deck.





	1. Missouri

**Author's Note:**

> This is a glimpse of pieces of Dean's life if he had been hiding his real power from every one he has ever trusted.

Missouri looked at the two boys John had foisted off onto her for the day with a heavy sigh. The older one blinked at her twice before stepping over the threshold of her tiny shop with his baby brother in tow and she knew that she was in over her head. The pair of them were as cute as they were unfortunate. It was a trait that she could already tell was going to work as much against them as it was going to work for them. The older one didn’t say a thing, he simply made his way over to the couch, situating the baby boy gently in the center as best as his small arms could manage and pulled himself up to sit next to him. If it had been anyone else’s son Missouri might have been surprised, but John Winchester was a hard man and there was never any doubt that he was going to raise hard sons, so she left them to sit like little soldiers while she put together some fixings on a tray.  
“Snacks?” Her voice was strong and melodious, the kind of voice that made any news seem like good news.  
The little boy squinted at her. Deciding if he trusted her not to put poison in the canapé and ultimately grabbed a carrot stick, munching on it silently. The heavy crunch of each bite filled the room and Missouri sat there, content to watch the boy finish all of the carrots and look covetously at the cheese cubes before she spoke again.  
“Your daddy said your name’s Dean.” She thought she would start with something easy, something he already knew she already knew. It wasn’t every day that she met a child as guarded as this one was.   
“Yes.” His little hand snapped out to grab some cheese and Missouri had to wonder when the last time he had eaten was.   
“And that’s Sammy?” Missouri nodded to the baby a soft sort of smile on her face, one like Dean remembered his mother wearing when she had watched him holding Sammy.  
“Yes.” He felt tears pulling tight at the back of his throat, making his voice squeaky.   
“Well, Sam. Dean.” She nodded to them both. “I’m Missouri Moseley, your daddy had to run a few errands so he thought you might have more fun with me.”  
“No, he didn’t.” Dean finally met her eyes. She wasn’t sure how she had missed it before, that spark grinding in the dark of his pupils. “We’re here because we’ll get in the way. He’s hunting down whatever killed mom.”  
“Whatever?” She had a feeling that pushing him was a terrible idea. “I thought it was a fire? An accident?”  
“Don’t lie to me, I’m not a baby.” Dean scooted himself up to his fullest height, which wasn’t much, with his feet still dangling off the edge of the sofa.  
“No, I don’t suppose you are.” She smiled in that soft way that Dean liked, but he scowled back in case she got the wrong idea that he was starting to trust her. “Your daddy left you here because he thought it was too dangerous for you to go with him.”  
Dean nodded once and went back to watching her sternly. On any other child, it would have been cute, such a tiny face with such an adult expression, like seeing a puppy barked for the first time. On Dean, it looked very much like a powerful old soul biding its time. On a whim, she leaned forward reaching out to touch the little bundle of baby that was Sammy. Dean lounged to the side to deflect her, and Missouri felt her conscious butt up against power, more power than should rightfully come from such a young child.  
“You’ve got some kind of gift darling.” She stood shuffling over to the bookshelf and pulling out a box full of old tarot decks that had rejected her. “Your gonna have to learn how to channel that before it gets out of control.”  
He watched her with keen eyes as she sat back down on the cushy chair next to his perch on the sofa. She unloaded the decks, setting them out neatly for him to inspect, not bothering to fill up the empty space with chatter. Dean liked that, he was used to the quiet. The quiet let him think about things, let that hum that was always filling up his mind settle into the cracks of the place he was occupying.  
“Do you ever feel like you ever feel like you know when something is going to happen?” Missouri finished setting out the last deck from the cigar box, leaving it open so the smell of old tobacco leaves filled the air. Dean shook his head. “No? Do things ever move because you think about them moving?”  
Again, he shook his head. She sighed heavily it would take forever to get through to him this way and it was less than likely that he would tell her even if she guessed it. There was a deep-seated distrust squatting inside the boy and she couldn’t say that she blamed him. Just as she was about to ask another seemingly pointless question, Dean reached out, snagging an old dog-eared Rider deck from the middle of the little collection. It was by far the least ornamental of all the decks sitting out on the coffee table. The first deck that she had ever bought actually, before she knew how to pick out a tarot deck before she had a glimmer of understanding of her own gifts. A grin spread unbidden across Dean’s features and Missouri couldn’t have seen for anything more fitting than for him to have it.  
He fiddled with the ribbon holding the deck together until he gave into his own curiosity and unraveled the thing. Shuffling the cards around, falling eventually into a rhythm of movement that let him relax enough that Missouri let her consciousness bump against his, again old power pushed back.   
“Why do you keep doing that?” Dean pinned her with a hard stare.  
“Doing what?” She wasn’t trying to hide, more like trying to finagle an answer out of him.  
“I don’t know.” Dean squirmed as her consciousness pushed against his once more. “That! Why do you keep doing that?”  
“I don’t know what you are talking about, I haven’t moved.” Missouri stared right back.  
“Yes, you do.” Dean stopped shuffling the cards, his complete focus on Missouri. “You know exactly what I mean. Why?”  
“It’s easier to get to know people if I poke around a little first.” She did that soft smile again, and Dean was starting to think that was her way of disarming people so they would trust her faster.  
“Well don’t do it to me.” Dean glared down at the deck. “I don’t like it.”  
“Why don’t you like it?” She was hoping that the conversation would be going a different direction but at least the boy was talking and given the scowl on his face that was a bigger triumph than she could possibly know.   
“It happened before.” He spoke down into the deck, his voice finally matching his tiny body.  
“Before, When?” She had a feeling that she wasn’t going to like the answer.  
“When the fire happened.” He fanned the cards out on his lap, letting his fingers dance over them until he slid one out to examine. “That’s what woke me up. I could feel something else in the house with us, I could feel it pressing up against the walls like that.”  
When he looked back up at her Missouri saw that hard light shining out of his serious eyes. She wanted to comfort him, to tell him that everything would end up okay, like she did for her other clients, but he would know that she was lying. One look at the boy and she could tell that he wasn’t the kind you trifled with.  
“What does this one mean?” Dean held up the card he had pulled from the deck, The Hanged Man. Sweet Jesus, could this kid ever catch a break?  
“Sacrifice, honey.” Missouri smiled grimly and Dean found himself preferring the honesty of that smile compared to the other.   
“I thought it might.” He returned the grim smile, the pair of them caught by their mutual understanding.


	2. Picnic Benches

Dean shuffled the deck again on the shitty wooden picnic table outside the motel they were staying at. Sam had been asleep for hours and the moon was finally at its peak. He was definitely taking a risk doing it out in the open, but they hadn’t seen John in weeks. Dean was pretty sure that he wasn’t about to show up now. He didn’t know when exactly he had stopped thinking of John as Dad, probably sometime around the millionth time he had dropped them off in some shit town that was too backwards to notice two kids running around with no parents. He flipped the first card over, the Hanged Man. Well whoop-dee-do, more sacrifice. Nothing new.  
A car pulled in the parking lot and Dean’s heart skipped in his chest, a boxy new sedan. Not the Impala. He laid down another card and then another, the spread was not looking good. He didn’t have any specific in mind when he had started it, maybe something along the lines of where he and Sam’s next meal was going to come from. They only had five dollars left from what John had given him to take care of them both and Dean had been rationing that for two weeks. He threw the last card with a groan, The Devil. Big choice coming his way, no shit Sherlock. Dean already knew what he was going to do. He could go a little longer without food, Sam was just a kid. Besides, he could always just hustle darts or something. There was a dive at the edge of town that didn’t care how under-age he was, plus the bikers there were always ready to hand him his ass, willing to bet the kitty that they could beat a cocky sixteen-year-old. They always lost though, Dean laughed to himself. Those dick-heads always fell for it, lose the first game play the angry irrational teenager double the bet, win the next. You didn’t need magic to beat those idiots.  
The car door slammed and two drunks poured themselves out of the back seat, stumbling to one of the doors at the far side of the complex. Dean could just make out the shape of a woman in the driver’s seat. She hadn’t cut the engine yet. If he had to guess Dean would say that she was contemplating leaving the drunks to fend for themselves. He watched her until she cut the engine, still sitting in the sedan, head thrown back in frustration.   
Feeling an unspoken kinship with the stranger he turned away, picking up the cards, shuffling them, ready for another disappointing spread. The car door slammed and he heard a feminine sigh. Figuring that the woman was going to follow her companions into the motel room Dean ignored it, until a large brown purse thunked down on the table in front of him.  
“You got a light, kid?” Up close she was beautiful. Wild messy hair, make-up smeared with sweat, a cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth. She smelled like whiskey and smoke, an acid wash jean jacket covering a ripped ACDC tour shirt. Dean was in love. “Hey, you listening?”  
She was snapping her fingers in his face. He jerked back his hand going instinctually for the knife strapped to his boot, before taking a detour to the zippo in his pocket. He flicked it open, holding the flame up to her, waiting until the end glowed red and smoke curled up into the night.  
“So, you gonna read my fortune or what?” The woman slipped onto the bench arcos from him, plopping her elbows onto the wooden table between them.   
Dean watched her, setting aside the fact that she was his every White Snake fantasy he had ever had. She looked tired, her eyeliner streaking into the lines around her eyes and her hands shook as she brought the cigarette to her lips. Fuck it, might as well.  
“You got something you wanna know?” Dean smirked up at her through his lashes.   
“Maybe.” She smiled, her teeth a little crooked. “You the gate keeper or someth’n?”  
“Just makes it easier.” Dean handed her the deck, the yellow light of the parking lot making both their hands look sickly. “Shuffle it and think about your question.”  
“Don’t need to ask the great spirit for guidance or someth’n.” She tucked the butt between her lips and began shuffling the deck with the ease of any Vegas professional.   
“Nah.” Dean rolled his eyes, Missouri had always said different but he was pretty sure there wasn’t any great spirit listening to a thing they had to say. “Just shuffle ‘em and hand ‘em back.”  
“Here.” The woman handed them back, smacking her electric pink lips. “So, what’s your story kid?”  
“No story.” Dean set the first card, nothing special, Six of Cups. It would only really matter once he saw what came next.  
“So, you’re just out playing psychic in the middle of the night for shits and giggles?” She took another drag, watching Dean lay the spread, blowing her smoke down wind, so he only got the tail end of it. “Not buying it. Sneak out on the family road trip?” He shook his head, another card, another lower arcana. “Shitty, mom?”  
“No.” Dean growled, sure she was beautiful but that only got you so far.  
“Sorry.” She tapped the ashes off on the side of the table. “Shitty dad?” Dean rolled his eyes at her. “Ah, so running away?”  
“No,” Dean huffed, scrubbing his face with one hand before turning over the next card. Next to last and the first Major he had seen. Death.  
“Well shit.” The woman looked at the card, resigned, like she had already known how her life was going.   
“Doesn’t really mean you’re gonna die.” Dean rested his elbows on the table, watching the woman with tender eyes. He knew that resigned stare all too well, it was the one he saw every morning in the mirror, the one he never let Sam see. “Just someth’n big. A change or something.”  
“That it?” She looked him up and down, suspicious.   
“Nah.” Dean shook the deck at her, smirking with more humor than he felt. “Still got one more card.”  
She motioned to the table, clearly saying “by all means thrill me”. He flipped the last card, enjoying their strange exchange more that he would like to admit; The Goddess. That was new.  
“What’s that one?” She smashed out her cigarette, nodding at the golden female laying on top of the rest.  
“The Goddess.” He blinked at it, surprised. Dean didn’t think that he had had such an optimistic read since, well, since ever.  
“Means someth’n good doesn’t it?” She half smiled at him.  
“Sort of.” Dean scratched his chin. “How’d you know?”  
“You’ve got this stupid happy look on your face,” She tilted her head back to look at the stars. “It’s a good look for you. You should do it more often.”  
“Well I’ll do that when I get a spread like this.” Dean snarled back, without any bite behind it, just that deep belly ache that came from not eating in a few days.  
“Okay, Cujo.” The woman wasn’t intimidated, instead she looked concerned. Dean hated it. “So, what’s it mean, oh great and powerful wizard?”  
“If you make the right choice here.” He pointed at Death. “Than you are going to have a good life. Whatever that big change is, it is good for you.”  
“Death is good. Got it,.” She sounded sarcastic but she looked back at the boxy black sedan with new interest. “You got a name kid?”  
“Let’s not do that, alright?” There was a small part of Dean that was worried that she would tell someone about him and then he and Sam would have to high tail it out of town before John got back and then they would be seriously screwed.  
“Do what?” She cocked an eyebrow into her overly hair-sprayed bangs. “Names? You don’t want to know my name?”  
Dean rolled his eyes at her again, her voice had taken on that whiny quality that probably had other men rolling over to present their bellies. She squinted at him in the dark sitting straight and pinning him with a hard look.  
“Alright.” Her voice turned hard like her look, and Dean loved it. “No names. You say that I can make a big change, right? That if I make this big choice that it turns out alright?”  
“The cards say it, not me.” He was not getting blamed for this shit, no way, not with that crazy look in her eyes.  
“Fine, whatever.” She stood up flicking the butt into the dirt and striding off, turning around to address him quickly before she disappeared into the same room the drunks had vanished. “Don’t move.”  
Dean shook his head, where the hell did she think he was gonna run off to? Fuck this, picking up the cards he shoved them into the inside pocket of his jacket. Less likely John would poke around in there, and there would be hell to pay if he thought Dean was getting into anything witchy. He stood up about to head back into his own shabby motel room when the woman darted back out of her room, a battered old duffle over one shoulder.  
“I said don’t move.” She hurried over dropping the bag on the table with a thud.   
“Listen lady.” Dean didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence.  
“Don’t lady me, kid.” She stopped him with another hard stare. “Listen I don’t know what you’re doing out here and if it were any other night I probably wouldn’t give a shit, but…”  
“But?” Dean prompted, finally feeling exhausted enough to fall asleep.  
“Fucked if I know.” She huffed, unzipping the heavy duffle bag and Dean finally got a look inside. She threw two of the thick bundles of cash down on the table between them and started zipping the bag back up. “Never trust anybody who says they’ll save you, kid. At the end of the day you got to do it all yourself.”  
As he watched her slide the sedan out from the motel parking lot he wished he had asked to go with her. For the barest of seconds, he imagined what his life would be like without John as his father, without having to raise Sammy in countless shitty hotel rooms. Maybe have her drop him off in Chicago, or California somewhere. Someplace he could finish high-school. Shit, maybe he could even think about college. The tail lights disappeared from view, reality kicked back in, and he knew he would never leave Sammy; family is everything.  
Back in his room Sam snored softly from the far bed, completely unaware that Dean had been anywhere but in the bed next to his. He tucked the cash carefully inside his own duffle inside a pair of rolled up socks, next to the shotgun John had left them for emergencies. Darkness caught him as he collapsed on to the cheap mattress. He was finally content, for the first time in days he was certain he would be able to feed Sammy until their father came back. If he rationed it right maybe they both could afford to eat. Even that constant burning in his belly wouldn’t keep him from sleeping tonight.  
Sirens woke both boys in the morning. Cold dread popped in the boy’s stomachs. They had been found out, and the state was here to drag them off, separate them. Dean was dressed and attempting to break the bathroom window when Sam tugged him off the sill and into the tub with a crack.  
“Sammy!” He felt the back of his head, checking for blood.  
Sam held his fingers up in the universal sign for be quiet. Just beyond their door they could hear police officers dragging someone out of their room. Dean peeked through the blinds in time to see the drunks from the night before, already in cuffs, trying to fight off four cops.  
“What do you think they did?” Sam looked up at Dean his eyes wide.  
“Don’t know.” He dropped the blinds before the police could see them. “Maybe they robbed a bank or someth’n.”


	3. Rehashing the Whole Damn Thing

“Enter Sandman” filled the silence of the Impala as it slid down the dark California highway. The truth was that he would have preferred not to be headed to Stanford. He would have been headed just about anywhere else. Hell, there was a trailer park in west Texas where he would get a warmer welcome. Sam wasn’t going to happy about him showing up out of the blue like this, but he had a feeling in his guts that John had gotten into something that he couldn’t find his way out of and it sat like rocks in his stomach.   
John had always had a heavy feel about him and Dean wasn’t a novice when it came to reading their father, but this time when he left there had been intention behind that gravitas. The second the car door slammed Dean had been all too aware that he wasn’t coming back easy. He had been hoping that it was just some left over mojo from their last hunt. Black dog cases could be like that, and the one they had been working in Dakota was no picnic. Not practicing regularly made it easy for Dean to pretend that he had never drawn a circle, that the bulge in his breast pocket was just another gun and not the dog-eared Tarot deck Missouri Mosley had thrown in his bag when John had been strapping Sammy into his car seat. The road made that part of him seem so much smaller than it was. Most days he could ride the crest between dumb luck and actual skill just fine. Magic didn’t like dabblers and if he didn’t get his act together soon there was more than a small chance that he would be coming into the business end of that wrath, sooner rather than later.  
Sam’s apartment building poked out between the larger nicer complexes, like a rusted penny. Dean felt a twist of jealousy. They were sleeping inside, Sam and the woman he thought Dean didn’t know about. He could feel their happiness from the sidewalk. He spat, slamming the car door, and patting the small of his back for the pearl handled 38 he kept tucked there. He wasn’t expecting to use it, but he was under no delusion that he and Sammy had parted on amicable terms. The night Sam had left for school his jealousy and tequila had gotten the better of him and he had sent him off on the wings rotten salutations Dean regretted now.  
He should have called. He should have knocked at least. He was a more nervous than he would admit though, and the swell of contented bliss that filled every room of the place had Dean itching to explore. Dean could tell that Sam was awake, the hit still felt like a surprise. Sam landed a few hits before he acknowledged Dean. Dean didn’t bother to block them all, he deserved them after how they had parted. Acting surprised to see Jessica had been harder than he thought it would be. He had missed Sam’s companionship more than he had thought. She was soft and clean, completely unlike almost every woman that had let him crawl into their bed, except Cassie. A pang of hot regret sliced in his chest and Dean felt it twinge at the corner of his mouth. He made some sleazy joke about her T-shirt, looking her over in a way he knew would keep both her and his brother from getting too cozy. Sam huffed and Dean felt that shimmer of resignation that hung off all the Winchesters.   
“Dad’s on a hunting trip and he hasn’t been home in a few days.” Dean let a little of the hard-lined intention bleed trough into his voice. A spark of darkness broke over his face, unbidden, like a sudden chill. Dean barely heard Sam respond. Barely registered that they were leaving the apartment. Anything beyond the feeling of his family racing to the precipice of some massive world bending event.  
Only when Dean had Sam back in the seat next to him had the loneliness of their father’s taciturn company hit Dean. Even pissed off and looking for the nearest escape hatch, Sam’s familiar energy complemented his and that long dormant power stretched in anticipation. Something was coming.


	4. I've Seen Better But Never Worse

The White woman was an easy mark even for how rusty Sam was. There was exactly no way that John had been taken by her. Sam knew it just the same as Dean and they both sat in equally annoyed silence. The old Rider deck felt like it was burning a hole through his chest. It had been ages since he had thrown a spread and even longer since he had meditated on that hum grinding away in the back of his skull. He had hoped, maybe naively, that having Sammy riding shotgun would stem the cacophony of sensation that had bombarded him since John had torn off. If anything, having his brother back in his orbit had sharpened everything to an almost unbearable constant tone. Dean flipped on AC/DC the drown out some of the noise, and for a few hundred miles it did.  
Dean could feel Sam preparing to leave before they even pulled onto his street. The anxious rattle of Sam’s energy pumping up and down next to Dean’s. Usually Sam felt like an old slipper, comfortable and worn in to the point where neither of them left any tread on the other. Dean knew why he would want to leave. Hell, if he had a Jessica waiting for him in some college flop house ready to take on the world, he would be just as done with this hunting shit as Sam. He didn’t have a Jessica though. He didn’t really have a dad, and he certainly didn’t have a home, unless you counted the Impala. Which he supposed you could considering how many nights he had spent curled up in the back seat pretending he wouldn’t rather be working as a mechanic in some junk yard, ignorant as fuck, and going home to the same woman every night. He and Sam said their goodbyes under the strain of Dean’s self-pity and Sam’s disinterest.  
It was that friction that disguised it. The rub of a familiar power against his own, old and malevolent. Dean knew he was too late before he could even smell the smoke, before the heat of the flames tickled the backs of his hands, he felt the effulgent feminine energy Jessica exuded snuff out. All he could do was drag Sammy out of another burning building. They stood together seething with anger. That kind of undirected anger that grows like a cancer in the belly of every good hunter, watching as the firemen put out the fire. The charred skeletal remains of Sam’s apartment standing for a long while after Jessica’s body was finally pulled from it. Eventually they watched it crumble once the moisture of the fog grey morning set into the bones of the place.  
That night Dean helped Sammy drink himself under the table, and booked them into a shady motel, six block from the old apartment. He left him in the semi-quiet of their room, moaning drunkenly for Jessica in his sleep for the picnic table outside. It seemed as if there was one at every shitty motel he had ever stayed at, sitting down on the wet bench was another reminder that his home had only ever been somewhere between the highway and his brother. He swept the water off the table top with his jacket sleeve, ignoring that fact that it was California and there wasn’t even a hint of breeze in the air. The jacket was more protection from his own guilt than anything. If he hadn’t wallowed like that he might have had a chance to save her, might have been there just a second sooner. It stabbed at him.  
Dean pulled out the Rider deck, staring at it with resigned determination. He hadn’t thrown a spread in years, not since Sammy had gone off to school. Maybe that was part of the problem too, maybe he had been ignoring his talent for too long. He had lost the edge it had given him. Maybe this was that wrath he had been skating alongside. Magic does not long abide a dabbler. He flipped the first card; The Devil. It stared up at him, a taunting lidless gaze, telling him it was his fault. Dean shoved the card back in the deck and stood, rooting around the trunk of the nearby Impala for the half bottle of whiskey Sam had left open and tilting dangerously to its side.


	5. The Only Lost Boy

Everyone left pieces of themselves everywhere they went. People, regular people, wander through life blissfully unaware that they leave traces of their history like bread crumbs everywhere they go. If you knew where to look, if you knew how to look, a witch (if Dean could even call himself that, not that he had) could find anyone. Dean knew the second that Sammy had been taken. It was like a void had opened in the room beside him, every trace of his brother had been swallowed by it.  
Dean hadn’t actually practiced in years. His powers atrophied, frail, impressions of the skill he had cultivated in the weeks left in shitty motels without his father’s judgmental gaze. Now, as he poured over his cards and tore through lore books searching fruitlessly for his brother, Dean wished he hadn’t wasted his talent on his father’s hunt for revenge. If he wasn’t a two-bit dabbler he would be able to find Sam, Yellow Eyes or not. In the end, Bonny was the one who found him. Just in time to watch Sammy die. The grief that followed was unlike anything he could put words too. He had lost his mother, his friends, any sense of innocence and still the only un tenable thing he could feel was his brother growing cold in his arms.  
Bobby settled Sam’s body in the back of his truck and Dean climbed in to sit next to the it, his face a wall of stone. The older hunter didn’t say anything, he just slammed the tailgate shut and drove them off to some molded out ruin of a house where Dean climbed out and carried his brother inside. It wasn’t until he tucked him into one of their cots that Bobby spoke.   
“We should start building the pyre.” Bobby’s gravelly voice was tight, clipping words even more than usual. “There’s a clearing not too far off. It’s… nice. Sam would’a liked it.”  
“No.” Dean’s growl shook in his chest and that horrible tightness gripped the back of his throat reminding him that real men don’t cry. “He’s gonna need his body.”  
Pinning Bobby with a Winchester stare, he stalked out of the crooked door. The roiling sick guilt of it all threaten to spill out of him. He braced himself on one of the shaggy moss ridden trees and wretched a few times. Bile rose out of his perpetually empty stomach, hitting the dirt with a wet smack of putrid yellow slim. Dean spit again for good measure the acrid taste of it still coating his tongue as his threw himself into the impala. It was empty without Sammy.   
It was a good thing the cross roads were empty, Dean didn’t have patience for some idiot begging for fame or money, or fucking true love. He didn’t give a rat’s asshole if they sold their soul or anything else tonight cause the chances were he would have had to kill them just for wasting the time those demons could have been helping Sammy. Let them all go to Hell, at least he would have some company.  
On any other day, for any other reason, Dean would have been suspicious at how quickly he struck a deal. Crossroads or not most demons tended to keep the Winchesters in the rearview. That night, he had barely gotten the box in the ground before she had shown up, already knowing what he would ask for. That frail shadow of the power he could have had turned over, sick. Finally, all of those tarot spreads made sense. The Hangedman at the last, every time.


	6. There Isn't Always A Choice

The thing about Hell wasn’t the pain. It wasn’t watching your flesh become other, or even the sound of screaming that never seemed to cease. The thing about Hell was starvation, and Dean had no one but himself to blame for that. Power has to be fed. If you refuse to feed it, it has no other choice but to hunt. When he had been alive, when his body had been his own, feeding his power had been a choice, in Hell nothing was.  
In the beginning, Dean had counted number of times Alastair had stretched him over the rack, carving him down to the soul. The sinister cackles of delight that had been shared between the courtiers of Hell at the finding the great Dean Winchester a vessel of magic burned into his memory. He memorized the turn of every cut, the nick in every blade laid to him, until he couldn’t remember his mother’s face, until the morals of his father were myths he knew the way school children learn Aesop’s fables, until Alastair grew bored of his flesh and began carving into that frail dying limb of his magic.   
Dean wanted to believe that it wasn’t his choice to rip apart souls the way he had. He wanted to believe that they had forced it on him. He knew the truth though, they offered that starving piece of him the one thing he had always denied it and his soul was paying the price. He watched in abject horror as he plunged his hands back in the pink mush that was the woman on the rack before him and laid into her soul. She screamed, or at least Dean thought it was a scream. His ears were filled with a rushing noise, as pure power filled him, that once necrotic Magic now stronger than the rest of his powerful body, made whole now by the repulsive power of ancient blood magic. He pulled away, blissed out on the narcotic high that came with being full to bursting with power. Even Alastair thought twice before he challenged Dean now. There were whispers between demons of the upper echelons about whether the old knight could ever hope to control the Winchester now that he had tapped into such an unspeakable power. That sick part of him, that part of him that reveled in the power, that liked the way his victims fell before him begging for mercy, that part of him listened to the whispers, lit a smile in his eyes. That was the thing about Hell, no matter how often he fed, he was always starving. Maybe that was the thing about magic too. All of the years he had dabbled had been taken out of him blade by blade, until he his flesh was made new and his magic called for blood.   
There were places in the darkest corners of the realm where the demons called for a new order, where Alastair’s reign was called into question. Places where the Winchester name was whispered in fear and reverence by younger malevolents calling for a dawn of new power. It made Dean snicker at his post. Most of them ignorant fools who could barely stomach the taste of flesh between their teeth, but even the old ones who backed his rise where betting on a shotty horse. Dean Winchester was still human. Year after year, body after body, his humanity coiled around his vessel, binding tight his guilt. While others fell, their eyes lifeless coals, burning pits in their faces as their victims sent them further into the depths of Hell’s depravity, Dean’s remained clear. He remained himself and maybe this too was the work of magic.   
The woman finally gave in, her body failing her, and Dean tossed her into his ever-growing pile of regret. He felt eyes on his neck. Without looking he knew Alastair was watching him. The star of the knight’s pupils, their rivalry was a thing of idle gossip in Dean’s mind. He was starving. His magic was starving, he didn’t give a shit if the old fuck was King of Hell or Middle Fucking Earth.  
“You showed her mercy?” Alastair only ever asked one question and that wasn’t it.  
“She was done.” Dean threw his razor onto the black stone alter, not bothering to clean it. The other tools there were crusted over with blood and rust, years of toil at the craft of pain. cementing in the minds of the Hellish that the Winchester was a creature to be fear.  
“She is done when you say she is, not before.” Alastair examined the Dean’s tools picking up a set of tongs that looked particularly gruesome, ones that Dean remembered very clearly from his own time on the other side of their grip.  
“I said she was done.” Dean growled at the elder demon. He could almost imagine the jeers and cries of revolt he could rally at his whim.   
“Your sarcasm is going to put you right back where you started Deano.” The raspy quality of Alastair’s voice had been a point of fear for Dean in the beginning. At first it had jump started that immediate flinch that comes without thought. Now it sounded to him like a desperate affectation, worth its weight in poorly written jump scares and little else.  
“You’re just jealous you couldn’t cut it out of me, Sweetheart.” Dean smirked at him over the pile of quickly regenerating flesh between them.   
“One more round for old time’s sake?” Alastair clicked the tongs at him, pouting over dramatically. “You know you want it Deano. Even before your little vacation here you were always a fan of a little bite in your fight.”  
“I don’t know, Honey Bear. You sure you don’t want to throw on some Kenny-G and take a bubble bath.” An arcane sort of laughter rolled out of Dean’s chest and up from between his lips, as if Alastair could string him up again. “What do you say I stretch you out and show you how it’s done?”  
Alastair advanced, ready to slam his weapon into the Winchester’s throat, but faltered as the sounds of the suffering fell silent, replaced by the ominous quiet of unrealized violence. A horn trumpeted from somewhere above and the dark world was lit with blinding hot light searing the silhouette of Alastair’s vicious face contorted in fury into Deans mind.


	7. An Angel for the Interlude

Brother after brother fell before him, their wings mangled, faces contorted in agony. Castiel didn’t know if any vessel was worth this kind of loss. Another damned soul hurtled past him gouging out parts of his own wing. Still he soldiered on, it was his duty. Even through the fog of battle he could see the brilliant red shine of the Winchester’s soul just ahead, pulsing with the intensity that he had yet to see in this most desperate of places. This was why Dean Winchester was the sword of Michael. Only the vessel of an arch angel could burn with such fire after lifetimes in the Pit.  
Souls stretched in varying states of dismemberment, each crying out for relief. A dangerous part of him wanted to help them, to use all of his considerable might to lift their suffering. Those were not his orders. Those tormented souls, tumbling one after the other, reaching out for salvation could not be saved, not any longer. He pushed further into the fray, past his brothers and sisters losing life and limb for the cause he was unsure would do any good, but the will of his superiors demanded a sword and so a sword they would have. A massive dark body gnarled with sin, stabbed tongs into his shoulder, a streak of hot light pouring out of the wound. His wings torn, his hands drenched in blood, Castiel had had enough. Ripping out the offending weapon, he flung the beast aside and reached out his hand finally clamping down around the Winchester’s arm.   
Power greeted him as he dragging the vessel upwards he felt it searing through him. He had never felt anything like it in all of his long existence. Granted, he had never raised a soul from Hell, never touched a soul laid bare. Power unlike anything he had ever experienced flooded his body and gave him the strength to lift Dean Winchester out of the Pit on his tattered wings.


	8. The Buzz on the Street Is

It had been lifetimes since he had seen the light of the sky. It burned hot and horrible against his skin and he shut his eyes against the glare of the sun. Still it burnt amber spheres into his eyelids. He felt the tingle of some long-forgotten emotion as the smell of grass and earth filled his lungs. Fear. Dean almost laughed. When was the last time he had felt anything close to fear? Maybe decades, maybe never. He couldn’t remember what it had felt like the first time he had been put on the rack, he couldn’t even remember the first time he had put some on it. He blinked a few times, taking in the flatted trees and the scorched earth that stretched around him, he took a deep breath holding it in his lungs until it burned. He was alive, Dean Winchester was alive.  
The gas station seemed deserted, not that he had looked too hard. Dean needed food, money, and to get the hell out of dodge. Maybe in another life he might have felt bad about stealing, but that time had long since passed. He threw down the empty water bottle and started another stuffing his finds into a plastic bag. Everything hurt a little, like the last dregs of a hangover finally leaving your body. The kind where your limbs feel too heavy and your joints don’t seem to line up right. It was still better than he had felt since that hellhound had turned his guts into a piñata. The more distance he put between himself and Hell the stronger he felt, the farther away from the cruel version of himself that he had become. Still magic hummed in in his mind, powerful and hungry. He passed the magazine rack, the top shelf littered with skin mags, Busty Asian Beauties right there on the end, and he felt a long-forgotten twitch in his cock. It had been so long since he had felt anything south of the border other than pain, he had almost forgotten why had had the damn thing to begin with. Grinning he flipped it open smiling grinning at the luscious female forms, bare for his perusal. A few decades in the pit and he had really forgotten how much he liked sex. He popped the magazine into the bag too, pausing to skim the rest of the titles in curiosity, but nothing else caught his eye in the same way.  
He felt it before he heard it, like the rush he had felt when he had touched souls on the rack, it started like a vibration in his veins, getting stronger and louder until it broke every window in the place. It pressed in on his magic from all sides until it was just gone, leaving Dean with distinctly hunted feeling of prey. He needed to find Sammy. If he was back then there was only one reason. Sammy had made his own deal, and even now, as depraved as he had become he would never let them take Sam. The payphone outside stood as the last fossil of a dead age and as long as it had a dial tone he didn’t give two shits.  
“Bobby!” Dean’s voice sounded strange to him like a bastard version of Alastair’s raspy tones, he coughed trying to clear out his pipes. “Bobby, it’s Dean.”  
“Don’t call here again.” Dean felt angry tears leak into his eyes. He didn’t blame him. He had no idea how long he had been gone or what had gone on in the world since he left.  
He barely had to nudge the broken down old sedan outside before it turned over, its long dead engine roaring to life with a sick gasless rumble. Dean reached out with his power, searching for Sam’s familiar energy, but got nothing. There was void where his brother should be, a blank space in his magic where he should be able to track Sam. Even at his weakest he had been able to feel Sam’s energy, if not to track him then to at least be able to tell he was alive. The car rumbled and puffed in protest to just sitting there in the dust, Dean cast out again this time looking for Bobby. He pointed the car Northeast and drove into the oncoming dark.


	9. An Eye For A Name

Pamela, his mind supplied the name as his magic crawled ahead of him lapping at the residual traces of psychic Bobby had insisted they visit. He could have done it himself, found the thing that dragged him out. It would mean giving himself away. It would mean letting his brother know that Hell wasn’t the only thing he was keeping from him. Dean couldn’t take that, couldn’t take any more of those sideways looks. Sam thought he was keeping it so discrete, like this was the first-time Sam had imagined him there beside him. Dean could feel the paranoia rolling off of him, that desperate longing to keep him close.   
The door opened and Dean let his magic run over her before his eyes did. Pamela quirked an eyebrow at the older Winchester but kept her mouth shut about the rest, letting her own energy tangle with his flirtatiously. Dean liked her instantly. There was a wildness in her heart, that coursed through her energy. It tangled her hair and pressed a whiplash smile on her lips. Dean flirted with her and she was careful not to touch him and he was glad for it. All of the embraces that he had shared with Sam and Bobby had felt foreign and too intimate by far. His body was unused to anything other than pain.   
Everything leading up to the séance was tedious and Dean caught Sam’s wistful look of pity when he rolled up his sleeve. He had to wonder just what his baby brother had been expecting. The hand print was certainly not it. It tingled in the open air as it had been doing since they stepped into the house and Pamela made eye contact with Dean before laying a finger on him. A wave of affection blanketed Dean, it had been a long time since anyone had bothered with his consent.   
That affection was short lived. Her magic touched his and his mind shot back into darkness, into the Pit. A silence unlike any that had every graced the cacophonous depths or that place fill Dean’s ear and he struggled to stay in the room. He knew in that moment that it was just another trick played on him by Alastair. For the first time he could ever remember Dean Winchester prayed. Someone held his arm in a vice grip, and he felt the horrible pain of being dragged back into his body, of every cell filling up with forgotten life. Those aching hours as his cells regenerated, the ones he had blocked out with his first breath of fresh air in a lifetime, filled every space of his mind and then nothing. Whatever they were looking for found them and his magic screamed in his veins.   
Dean jerked out of the spell. He could have pulled Pamela out of it too, if he hadn’t been so careless; he should have. He was stronger, his magic darker, meaner. He could have taken her with him. He could have saved her eyes. Her nails digging into the flesh of his arm told him a familiar story though. Pamela hadn’t wanted to let it go, her magic was starving for answers, just like his own. That was the thing about magic.


	10. Zoo Lions Don't Roar

He guessed angels made sense, as much as demons and magic made sense anyway. Dean didn’t like the way this “angel” looked at him, didn’t like what he could inevitably see his festering soul. Did he know?  
“I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition,” Castiel spoke with gravitas unlike any with which Dean was familiar.   
“Right,” Perdition, it was more than he deserved. The power that had once been almost a separate thing from himself, now pounded in his soul, studying Castiel the way children watch the lions at the zoo; certain that they could tame one if they only had the chance.   
Castiel watched Dean in wonderment. After everything he had gone through after the abuses of Hell, his soul should not shine as it did. He had seen the burnished souls lost in the pit himself. Pushed past their tormentors and lost his men in the pursuit of Dean Winchester. It simply made no since that his should burn with such limitless potential. At the very least it should be dimmed by the flesh of his mortal form, still it burned the strange crimson hue he had thought was just the shadows of Hell casting aspersions on its glory. Perhaps this was the gift of the vessels of archangels. Castiel could see no other logical explanation. He felt the magic brush against his consciousness, rushing past his vessels defenses and meeting his own with full force. It took him by surprise. He pushed back careful not to knock the Winchester out as he had done with the other mortal. The mortal sneered at him in response and for the first time in his very long existence Castiel found something new.


	11. Quick, Dirty, and Only Half Naked

He had dealt Sammy half truths about his time in hell. The full story was dirty and Dean couldn’t stand the thought of his baby brother looking at him the way he looked at himself. So, he gave him the Reader’s Digest version, just enough so that he had an idea but not enough to give him nightmares. Dean had enough nightmares for the both of them.  
“It wasn’t your fault.” Sam took a swig of beer, watching his brother with the same intense puppy dog face that Dean had seen countless times before focused on victims and their families, that wordless outcry of support. Dean didn’t want it. He didn’t deserve it.   
“You heard me, right?” Dean finished his beer throwing the bottle onto the ground with a satisfying crash. “I put them up there. I tore them apart same as every other piece of shit demon we chase. I’m the bad guy.”  
“You know it isn’t as black and white as that.” Sam let his beer warm up against his palm while he contemplated his brother. “Come on Dean.”  
The weather was turning bad, it gave Dean the out he needs to change the subject and get them off this god forsaken patch of highway.


	12. Keep It Zipped

Sam is hiding something from him. He was never any good at keeping things secret, he was too much of a do-gooder to keep a lid on anything for too long. To be honest Dean was almost impressed that he had kept from saying anything. Whatever it was would come out eventually and the alone time wasn’t hurting Dean any. It was easier for Dean to pretend that the nightmares weren’t happening, when he woke up alone in whatever shitty motel room they were in this week. It gave him a chance to practice, gave him the solitude to meditate on the steady thrum of power that filled the quiet places in his blood. If nothing else Alastair was a brilliant teacher and his lesson would not soon be for gotten.


	13. Standards and Starvation

Patrick knew the moment that Dean Winchester walked into his town. He knew the second that he walked into state. Power like that doesn’t come without a calling card and when you knew where to look, how to look, tracking magic wasn’t nearly as hard as those half assed hearth witches made it seem. The smartest thing would have been for Patrick to pick up his game and take it on the road. Find some new shtick to rouse up a few more lifetimes, but as it often did, curiosity got the better of him.   
He could almost believe he was imagining it, almost miss the red halo that hung around the hunter like a death shroud of power. The rumors of the dabbling hunter paled in the face of this reality. As old as he was and as long his line of well-practiced witches as he descended, Patrick had only ever read about magic like this. Even at that it was footnotes on the darkest of arts. Blood sacrifice and demon deals were paltry imitations of this. Dean Winchester practiced soul magic.  
Patrick enjoyed the shiver of anticipation roll down his spine.   
“To what do I owe this dubious honor?” Patrick smirked in an easy way that set Dean on edge. The other man’s magic crackled like heat lightning.  
“You know why I’m here.” Dean’s voice was low hitting those base registers that he had saved up on the early days in hell when he had felt brave. It killed him to think that he was somehow reverting.  
“Of course.” Patrick blinked slowly like a cat taking in a new predator. “Then again you could just as simply burned my palace to the ground. So, the question remains, Dean.”  
“Have we met?” Dean regarded the witch with a growing discomfort. He didn’t like the way the man’s eyes traced over his body, as if every scar he had ever endured was on displayed for his perusal.  
“Come on Dean.” Another slow blink, another smirk. Some secret weighed behind his lips ready for that shattering reveal, it had Dean’s heart racing. Not in fear. Fear was for other people. “The Winchester’s are not exactly subtle. Where ever you gog you leave a trail of bodies in your wake babe or beast makes no mind to you the hands of Death himself.”  
Dean gritted his teeth feeling them sheering against one themselves with a horrible squeal. He imagined the witch’s face in the Pit, Alastir standing over him, blade in hand. A phantom pain skittered over his chest and Dean rubbed it hoping his weakness wasn’t as obvious as his occupation.  
“Alright, buddy why don’t you…”  
Patrick cut him off.  
“Patrick, please.” He grinned at the hunter. “I think we have established that you and I share far more intimate terms than Buddy.”  
“Patrick.” Dean spat out the name like blood in a bar fight.  
“Mmm,” Humming in satisfaction Patrick turned to his bar. Carefully picking but his most prized single malt.  
“Pretty cocky for a man who was just waxing poetic on the fields of bodies I’ve got to my name.” Regardless of his situation Dean took the crystal tumbler. The whiskey filled his senses the way only barrel aged treasures can, seducing his breath right out of his body.  
“If you were going to kill me you would have already. You want something. You wouldn’t be the first hunter to seek out one of us.” Patrick spread his arms displaying his impressive physique, and expensive suit. Dean’s eyes shown with a roiling jealousy.  
“Carefully, Deano.” Taking a smooth step closer to the enemy Patrick tuck a swig of his amber nectar back, letting the smokey notes fill him up. “Come on let’s have a chat.”  
Dean threw back the last finger of whiskey just to spite him. The burn that ran the length of his throat barely registered. His magic was awake, was humming with anticipation. A part of his soul was calling out to like desires. He didn’t like it. Granted, he didn’t like much anymore even sex didn’t hold the same appeal it once had. Desperate for some relief from the buzz in his blood, from the brutal hunger that wasn’t satisfied by anything known to him. Dean had sought him out. How had he thought that this would go any differently? Patrick let him sit there in silence starring uselessly into the empty tumbler for as long as Dean could stand it. Which was longer than either had expected. To both of their surprise the quiet agreed with them, gave that simmering violence that Dean was so used to a chance to breathe. That aching isolation of his magic lifted if only for brief moment before he remembered what Patrick was.  
“You could give them back.” Dean surprised himself. Talking into the empty glass before settling into the rigid, high back armchair.  
“You could take them.” Patrick, long since settled into his own arm chair.  
Dean nodded. This line of conversation wouldn’t get them anywhere.  
“So, the others don’t know.” Still sipping the fine spirits, Patrick watched the hazey red glow of power ripple around the hunter as he processed the situation. How anyone could miss it was beyond novice. The hunter tilted his head with a jerk of acquiescence, and Patrick chuckled. “How do they miss it?”  
A crack of laughter burst from between his lips before he processed the words. The red haze expanding rapidly into the room pulsing with delighted energy.  
“Somehow everyone else misses it.” Dean set the tumbler down on the spindly side table, finally relaxing into the space he liked this guy. His magic liked him. “Might as well be blind.”  
Patrick smiled in his lazy way, relaxed in his certainly that even if Dean was to be his executioner. This hunter was at least a worthy opponent.   
“Why is it that you’re really here Dean?” The witch tossed back the last of his drink setting it aside and setting himself, elbows on his knees, hands steepled, as he fixed Dean with serious stare. He was with silence from the hunter. Steeling himself against the inevitable repercussions. Patrick reached out clasping Dean on the forearm. Power seared his finger tips and what ever he had hoped to accomplish with the touch was lost.  
“I wouldn’t do that.” The hunter was smirking at him. Dean didn’t have to stop him. He could have let him pick around the out skirts of his magic until the old witch wore himself out, but Dean didn’t like nosey people.   
Their eyes met for a moment, Patrick’s hand still clasped on the supple leather of John’s hand-me-down jacket. Patrick gritted his teeth as the red haze crawled into his fingers and into the palm of his hand. His skin melted away from the muscle and tendons snapped as the heat of old dangerous magic pilfered his strength.  
Dean let his magic take what it wanted, watching Patrick closely as they battled for one more inch on the other’s resolve. A sickly pop of Patrick’s knuckle cracking in the smokeless inferno spiraled a wicked thrill in Dean’s gut and he jerked back. For a moment the bloody residue of soul magic hung over his victim before drifting back to Dean with a laziness Patrick had never seen.   
“I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything quite like you.” Patrick let his hand hang between them. Watching it as his own magic swaddled the useless skeletal appendage. The pain of his bones popping and snapping back together had him grunting in an effort not to cry out in pain. When he finally couldn’t watch the gruesome otherness of his own limb any longer he turned his attention to the Winchester. Dean watched on his mouth a grim line.  
“You’re quite the piece of work aren’t you?” Patrick could feel the boiling wet slither of his skin wrapping back around his hand. He flexed his fingers balling them into a fist.  
“Hell doesn’t deal in half measures.” The hunter leaned back, his eyes still glued on the hand held between them.  
“No, I suppose it wouldn’t.” The confrontation struck Patrick as surely as any curse. Rumors of damnation had been idle gossip. Even the red aura of soul magic only hinted at the truth.  
They both let the silence settle into the shadows. “How?”  
“Angels.” Dean chuckled scratching the stubble on his jaw.  
“Fuck me.” Patrick collapsed back in his seat, his magic flying around the room bathing the walls in the chaos. “Didn’t see that one coming.”  
“None of us did.”  
“Well I’d say the pair of us could use another.” Nodding to the half-forgotten glass beside Dean. He nodded and Patrick made quick to grab the glass avoiding brushing against the Winchester in any way. Out from the singular attention of Dean’s gaze Patrick took a breath trying to process this new revelation. Angels.  
“Not the feathery do-gooders you’d think they are either.” Dean let him have his moment of contemplation, speaking to the blank chair in front of him.  
“Wouldn’t expect them to be, but my god is from different times.” Patrick’s voice relaxed. “Yours too it seems.”  
“Not mine.” Dean gritted his teeth. “There’s an angle to this, there’s an angle to everything.” Dean pinned him with a look, his violent intentions clear in his eyes. “You have an angle here, and we both know I’ve got one.”  
“Angle?” Patrick studied the older Winchester, bemused. “In the singular? For all your power your still so blinded by your father.”  
Every muscle in Dean’s body burned with the urge to slice a hole in the witch’s gut. He held still, even as the truth boiled over him, allowing himself to imagine what Patrick’s magic would taste like to his own. Patrick watched him that stupid twist of his lips telling Dean that he was enjoying the inner turmoil.  
“I get it.” Dean leaned back in his chair not trusting himself not to act on his impulses. “You’re an old as fuck witch and I am the young dumb newb. Lesson learned, let’s get to the part where you give Bobby his years back and I don’t follow you to the next shit hole you crawl into.”  
“Shit hole? Now that’s just hurtful, Deano.” Patrick looked around at the penthouse suite in which they were currently residing. “You’ve never seen something this nice unless you’re painting the walls red.”  
He wasn’t wrong and it chaffed at Dean’s ego.  
“You could take Bobby’s years back.” Patrick sipped his new drink, eyes never leaving Dean. “You could let that power of yours consume the world if you had half a thought to, but you don’t, and I don’t think it’s the guilt keeping you in line. It’s shame, you Dean Winchester are ashamed. So, why don’t you lighten your burden Deano. I’ll Play you for ‘em. We can let the cards decide who’s right and who’s losing.”  
“Why would I do that?” Dean scoffed.  
“Why wouldn’t you just take them?” Patrick watched Dean’s mouth tighten into a thin line of anger. Still he didn’t act on it. “I get it. This is just between us witches.”  
“I’m not one of you.” Dean growled.  
“Well, that is a shame.” Patrick shook his head, chuckling into the last drag of his whiskey. “Magic does not long abide a dabbler and here I was getting all attached to you.”  
“What I do, it’s not some parlor trick for bored coeds.” The low gravel pitch of Dean’s voice seemed to shake the air with its veracity.   
“Didn’t say it was.” Patrick kept his tone light, ignoring the life or death implications of the whole situation. “You’re not an idiot, stop playing at it. Magic isn’t good, it isn’t evil. Magic is raw power and it is only what you do with it that corrupts us.”  
“So, stealing years off people’s lives falls where on that spectrum Patty?” Dean snarled, his magic flaring around him. Starving for something to more corporeal.  
“I don’t go around stealing years off half soused bar flies.” Patrick ignored Dean’s little jab and continued. “These people find me, and just so you know, I don’t always win.”  
“You’re still not exactly on the up and up are you?” Dean was struggling to keep his magic in check the last week on the road had him twitchy even without this mouthy fucker.  
Patrick pulled a deck of cards out of the inner pocket of his fine woolen jacket. They were older than any deck that sat on the game table behind them. Hand painted barely even foxed around the edges, a well-loved treasure the old witch kept close to his heart.  
“I know it’s sentimental and all, but me Da gave ‘em to me.” Patrick smiled, catching Dean in a rare moment empathy. He watched the red haze flutter satisfyingly around the hunter, pulsing in and out with each of the other man’s breaths. “You feel that?” He waited for Dean’s sharp nod of understanding. “Soul magic doesn’t thrive on flesh and suffering alone.”  
“Soul magic?” Dean swallowed do that ingrained voice in his head telling him not talk about his gifts out loud. Loose lips sink ships and his could burn the world.  
“That power you got riding low in your guts,” Patrick spoke slowly, more amused than condescending. “All that hunger telling you nothing is ever going to fill that hole inside you, that’s the magic; soul magic. It will take every last part of you unless you learn to control it.”  
“Tell me something I don’t know, buddy.” Dean almost stood up, almost made good on the unspoken threat to take Bobby’s years back and burn the damn place to the ground.  
“How would I know what you do or do not have greater understanding of?” Patrick tilted his head like a curious kitten, smirking again in that shitty way Dean was beginning to hate. “A man’s soul is utterly and completely his own. What he experiences, what he propagates in his life feeds. Those things, his loved ones, his cherished memories, his nightmares, they strengthen or weaken it. You don’t have to widdle someone out of their skin to touch their soul Dean.”  
“That is the sappiest load of crap since the last Nicolas Sparks movie.” Dean did stand this time. “Spill your Lifetime crap to someone else.”  
“You’ve made your for now.” Patrick slid the cards back into his pocket, out of sight out of reach of a pissed of Winchester with an atomic bomb’s worth of chaotic magic. “Nicolas Sparks or not that power of yours won’t survive on demons alone. Sooner rather than later it’s going to go hunting all on it’s own and I think we both know where that leaves you.”  
Images of the Pit flashed behind Dean’s eyes; Alastair’s shock as he peeled back that last piece of his body to see the magic cowering inside of him; the malignant rush of power he got every time he threw another victim on the rack. It was killing him, but his magic didn’t care. It was hungry.  
“Even if I believed you, I’m gone already.” Dean moved to the door. “We’re going to come for you. We don’t leave family like you left Bobby. You could give ‘em back now or we’ll take ‘em back later.”  
“You know Dean for a man of your advanced age you should really think about lightening up on those threats of yours.” Patrick crossed the short expanse of the room to defiantly clapped Dean on the shoulder, pulling out a business card with his other. “When you’re ready to have a real honest chat about things let me know.”  
“What the fuck are your talking about?” Dean snarled at the much shorter man, hating that even from his commanding height the old witch still seemed to be in control of the room.  
“I mean Deano,” Patrick belly laughed, covering his mouth with the palm of his hand, hiding his slightly crooked teeth. “You’re getting old real old.”  
It wasn’t until he caught a glimpse of himself in the rear-view of the Impala that he realized what the witch had done, the corner of Patrick’s velum business card poking insistently against his chest, right next to his old Rider deck.


End file.
